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If you could magnetize the hull of a tank so that it had an extremely negative charge, and somehow magnetized incoming bullets so that they acquired a similar negative charge, would this essentially create a sort of repelling-thingy force shield?

The like charges would repel, and the bullets would slow down the closer they got to the hull. With a strong enough charge, they might even be stopped completely and flung in the other direction.

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If you could magnetize the hull of a tank so that it had an extremely negative charge, and somehow magnetized incoming bullets so that they acquired a similar negative charge, would this essentially create a sort of repelling-thingy force shield?

The like charges would repel, and the bullets would slow down the closer they got to the hull. With a strong enough charge, they might even be stopped completely and flung in the other direction.

I don't see why this could not work… in theory. This is pretty much how electric sails work. One tiny weeny complication is that solar sail works in space and dont need that much charge. Deflecting a projectile would obviously need a lot more and your tank would suck up charge from surroundings so you'd need to replenish it constantly. Electron gun would do, but I guess that power requirements would be prohibitive. Chargin up incoming projectile could be done with stream of antiprotons. Putting aside power requirements for this, it would also drain you precious charge, because law of charge preservation is a poodle.

On more, ermmm, positive side, you don't really need to push as far as stopping incoming projectiles, deflecting them a bit would be good enough. And if you really are sitting in a tank, you don't even need to deflect them that much - turning headon hit into glancing blow may be enough.

Of course this is just a thought experiment - with this kind of technology at hand, one would rather pimp up those antiproton accelerators a bit and use them to turn things into hot plasma.

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If you could magnetize the hull of a tank so that it had an extremely negative charge, and somehow magnetized incoming bullets so that they acquired a similar negative charge, would this essentially create a sort of repelling-thingy force shield?

The like charges would repel, and the bullets would slow down the closer they got to the hull. With a strong enough charge, they might even be stopped completely and flung in the other direction.

That would really suck when your enemies pulled out their positively-charged ammo.

Easy, relatively speaking - xrasers and grasers are a valid concept. Never heard of a non-consumable graser, but a German-Russian research team in Hamburg already operates a free electron laser that produces x-rays. Both x-rays and gamma rays can be produced by nuclear-bomb-powered designs.

55 minutes ago, Diche Bach said:

Or Rocks?

It's not a laser. The L constrains it to various forms of electromagnetic radiation.

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Easy, relatively speaking - xrasers and grasers are a valid concept. Never heard of a non-consumable graser, but a German-Russian research team I Hamburg already operates a free electron laser that produces x-rays. Both x-rays and gamma rays can be produced by nuclear-bomb-powered designs.

It's not a laser. The L constrains it to various forms of electromagnetic radiation.

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you have a RAILG UN! Geebus, they really don't have common sense gorn laws in Russia, eh!?

The progress of mankind, back then I was an teen redneck pipe bombs / solid fuel rockets was high tech (size of hole in rear and how fast the mixture burns is the difference between them) now they play with rail guns and You hack your car to trim it
in 50 years it will be hold my beer while I power up the warp drive

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Would it be possible for gunpowder-era civilization to make a working nuclear bomb by using a cannonball-sized ball of uranium encased by layer of explosives (To force fission) connected to a fuse? How powerful it would be around it's size?

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Would it be possible for gunpowder-era civilization to make a working nuclear bomb by using a cannonball-sized ball of uranium encased by layer of explosives (To force fission) connected to a fuse? How powerful it would be around it's size?

Like this one?

(For added fun, throw it from trebuchet as a makeshift tactical nuke)

Modern fission warheads use explosive lenses. They are powerful explosives that produce a sharp shockwave and control the wave to converge on the uranium precisely. Without the explosive lenses, the amount of explosive you'd need would be massively more. Using a low-grade explosive like gunpowder... you'd need tens of tons of explosive for even the smaller yield. Might as well just drop the gunpowder by itself.